


Natsukashii

by PrecariouslyNeutral



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Infidelity, M/M, Open to Interpretation, Other, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9319556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrecariouslyNeutral/pseuds/PrecariouslyNeutral
Summary: Natsukashii- The feeling for things long past that can never come again.We never really do know what's happening in anyone's head at any one given moment. Yuuri has always had a lot more going on than what he lets on. An alternative version of events after the Grand Prix where bad choices are made, and after Victor, nothing can really ever put Yuuri back together, after all.





	

It starts as a low panic. After the skate a low tide rises in his stomach, and he can't breath. His lungs don't function the right way around, and every second that passes dims his vision even further. There's a low ringing in his ears, and the only thing that fills his head is a choking nothingness that seems to throw his every sense into overdrive. Every ounce of adrenaline that had been unwillingly injected into his veins has suddenly nosedived, and Jesus Christ there are black spots swimming in his eyes. 

 

 Somehow he stumbles into a bathroom stall. Sitting on the toilet lid, the waves of shame wash over him, sharp shards jamming into his head like brain freeze, reminding him that this- skating- is all he's good for. Its the only thing he can do. And he's failed. Nothing more than a waste of space. Nothing less than an embarrassment. Someone is yelling at him through the door. He doesn't hear him. The blond asshole isn't telling him anything he doesn't already know. 

Its all true. 

The ringing in his head intensifies, and he can't breath. This time, for real. 

God, he's pathetic. 

The bathroom door slams, and he's alone. Again. 

Somehow, he manages to get himself looking passable on the outside, a facade facing the outside world, when in reality, the ringing has only gotten louder, and the only thing he can hear is the sound of his rasping breath as he tries to leave, to get far away from this place. Because he's too far past his prime and he will never do anything worthwhile on the ice again- but that's not quite right. He can't. Think. Right now. Not clearly, anyway. 

Time passes. He can't tell how much. The ringing has stopped, and he feels like an empty shell. Nothing hurts. Like everything inside of him had been suctioned out. He walks. Everything seems to be ok, for the time being. 

Until he sees another Russian with blonde hair and a smile that makes yuuri's hair stand on end, and makes every element of crippling doubt resurface, asks him if he wants his autograph. 

It's just 5 words.

Its too much. 

He cracks. 

* * *

 

He doesn't say anything. He boards his plane to Japan. He doesn't sleep for a second- he doesn't respond to anyone's questions. No one recognizes him. In his head, he doesn't know if it's a blessing, or the ultimate revelation of his failure. He finally decides, as the plane touches down, and he subconsciously boards a train, that it's both.  

He eats enough to at least feel. Feel. Like he's not empty. He throws up twice. It doesn't stop him. 

He blacks out in a hotel room at some point, utterly spent. Everything bleeds away. He fills his stomach for the last time before falling asleep. This time the food stays down. This time- he lets it. 

Nothing matters. At least for a little while. He just eats and sleeps. The mirrors in the hotel room- at least the ones he has access to- are either broken or turned around. No one needs to see him like this. Not even himself. 

Eventually he steps away from the brink. Locks all the voices back in a box in the back of his head, the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. He knows. But its all he needs for now. He's gained weight. He can feel it. He always does. 

He finds his way back to the rink. He always does. He can curse it to the moon and back. Its the only thing he can do, that he cant, anymore. The snap of cold under his hands makes him feel real, even if he isn't. The extra pounds weigh him down. He can feel it. He always does. He barely feels the ice until it's digging into his cheek. He lets it. Even that feeling is better than nothing. Because that's one thing the angry Russian kid was wrong about.

He could never quit. It's too late for that. The ice is all he has, it's his ultimate enemy, a siren, calling him to his doom. And who is Yuuri to resist? 

He falls again. 

This time it's on purpose. 

 

He starts to wonder if it ever wasn't

* * *

 

When Victor shows up, Yuuri wonders if it has finally happened. He's insane. Fat and insane. Well, he could think of worse combinations. 

He laughs. For a second he almost fools himself along with everyone else. He laughs with Victor, feels embarrassed with Victor. But then, unfailingly, every night, he remembers. It doesn't flood back, like you'd think. Instead, it creeps in slowly, carefully, until it's constantly in the edges of his head.

He falls asleep, nonetheless. 

* * *

 

Victor is his coach. 

Victor won't let him skate. 

Yuuri isn't sure which one scares him more. 

He decides that it's both. 

 

He's probably right. 

* * *

 

Weeks pass. He wins Victor. at least he thinks he does, as Victor kisses him and he's crushed against the rink.

They get rings.

He feels terrifyingly happy.  

 

Suddenly, Yuuri's life doesn't seem so miserable anymore. They skate, they live, together.  Yuuri almost forgets what he was like before. 

His silver medal matches Victors hair. He feels whole again, filling in his body. For once, he's not a shell. He flies for Victor. And everything is as it should be. Yuuri's hair grows longer, and he finds himself unwilling to cut it. So much has changed. 

The streets of St. Petersburg aren't as cold as they really are when he has Victor by his side. 

* * *

 

He doesn't see it coming. but then again, no one ever does. 

Her lips are crimson against Victor's pale skin. Her moans fill their apartment. She says something in crisp Russian that Yuuri can't understand. 

He supposes he never had. 

 

He cuts his hair that day. 

* * *

 

Instead of the ringing, he just feels numb. He doesn't eat himself into oblivion like he ought to. He feels cold, for the first time since moving.

He doesn't get his things. He doesn't bother. He leaves the ring on the kitchen table. He knows reality hasn't hit yet. That everything his anxiety had been whispering to him about all these years has come true. Whatever. He'll feel it eventually. He always does. 

He realizes he doesn't want to go home. 

 

He doesn't. 

He finds a cheap temporary place in Japan, in a small town where no one knows him. It's almost amazing how different he looks with a buzz cut and no glasses. He gets all the rough sex he can handle, and more. He tells his mother that he'll be going away for a while. He hangs up before she can ask him how he's feeling. 

He fucks and drinks until he can't feel Victor's hands on him. Until he can't feel anything at all.  

He stands in the doorway. 

Shutting himself in the foreign room, his hands sliding down the shut door behind him, he wishes it were colder. 

The ringing comes back, slowly, and then all at once. 

He realizes, in a sick way, that he'd almost missed it. He laughs. He laughs until he can't breath. 

It was inevitable from the start. He'd known it. Victor was the unattainable. 

His weird tick about mirrors comes back. Reflective shards litter the bathroom floor until he picks them up. Days pass.

 

Its the opposite of before Victor. He can't bring himself to eat. He feels his bones sharpen, and come into focus through his skin. His soft edges fall away. 

 

He works himself to within an inch of his life. 

It makes him tired. 

Eventually he feels it pass. 

Everything passes. Always. It always does. 

He doesn't know if that's a blessing or a curse. He decides that it's both. 

 

He's probably right. 

 

* * *

 

He finds himself back on ice.

 

He knew he would. 

He dances to music that isn't there, and he feels lighter than he ever has before. He feels like elation personified. 

He runs through everything he can. He skates, and sweats, and manages a quadruple flip until his wrecked body can't move anymore. 

He falls more than he had in years.

He doesn't care. Even as blood gushed from his knees and forearms, he feels more alive than ever. 

 

He goes back to Hasetsu. No one asks him any questions. They don't dare. Yuuko holds him and cries. Yuuri doesn't understand why. 

He can't let himself. 

But for her sake, he lets her feed him. She cleans him up. 

 

The only thing that he doesn't touch is the katsudon. 

* * *

 

Yuuri changes. 

He skates relentlessly, eats carefully, becoming a shard of his previous self. 

His smiles become more and more infrequent, as his skating improves by leaps and bounds. 

He creates his routine with yuuko's help, even as she begs him to stop. But he can't. 

He can't explain why. 

Strangely enough, the one who comes back to see him is the other Yuri. 

Yuri doesn't recognize him. 

For once, Yuri doesn't yell. Yuri cant say a word. 

Yuuri barely recognizes himself, to be honest. 

"Yuuri- "

 

Yuuri can't listen to a word he says. 

* * *

 

In St. Petersburg, Yuri Plisetsky exudes a quiet anger. 

Also in St. Petersburg, Victor lays on his back in the middle of a broken apartment. He holds a lit cigarette in one hand, and clutches Yuuri's ring in the other. 

He drinks. 

The metal around his finger clinks with Yuri's ring as he rolls it around in his palm. He lights another cigarette, bringing it against his lips and inhaling deeply. The ash and his hair make a grey halo around his head. He smokes until he can't breath anymore. 

What's more disturbing is that Yakov lets him. Without a word. 

He knows that he's at fault. 

It was stupid of him. 

He sees Yuri after his trip to Japan. He listens to what he'd done to Yuuri. 

He can't go back.

It's the worst choice he'd ever made in his life. 

But as much as he wishes he could, he can't go back. 

He tries anyways. He gets dirty looks from people he doesn't know. Of course he does. His affair was public knowledge, wasn't it? 

He goes to Hasetsu.

It's the most clinical service he's ever received. it's nothing like last time. Yuuri's parents don't acknowledge that they'd ever met.

After a week, he finds Yuuri. 

 

The sight chills him to the bone. 

On the rink, he flows through a routine Victor had never seen before. 

Yuuri is anger personified. 

But what scares him is deeper. 

Yuuri is deathly thin. His previously rounded features are sharpened. 

 

He looks like a shard of ice. 

Victor hates what he's done. Bile rises in his throat. 

The music stops. 

Yuuri puts his glasses on, and his eyes find Victor's in the audience. 

 

There's no reaction. 

 

Yuuri doen't even blink. 

 

"Yuuri- "

Victor talks. 

 

Yuuri can't bring himself to listen to anything he has to say. 

* * *

 

Victor begs. 

Yuuri doesn't care. 

Yuuri doesn't cry, or scream, or rage at Victor. He can't bring himself to feel anything towards him anymore. 

Victor tries to stay. He talks. 

Yuuri's eyes glaze over every time he does. 

Yuuri expects Victor to stop trying eventually.

 

Victor does, of course.  

* * *

 

Yuuri shocks the world with who he's become. With Celestino back on as his official coach, he sweeps through the qualifying rounds. 

At the cup of china, Yuuri sweeps the scoreboard. In Moscow, he sets a new record. 

At the grand Prix he ties with Victor. There's a final tally. Yuuri is ice cold. He doesn't blink, he doesn't falter. He just waits. 

 

At the grand prix, he wins. 

 

Something in Yuuri breaks. 

 

This time it's a good thing. 

* * *

 

Dimly he remembers Victor's promise to him a year ago. 

For the cameras, he smiles. For the first time in a year, it feels real. 

He finds himself in a bathroom stall again. 

 

He cries until there's nothing left. 

He did it. It's done. Something coiled deep within him, finally gives.

He needed this. 

 

Yuri finds him again, carries him back to his room when he blacks out. 

He even yells at Yuuri for old times' sake. and for old times' same, Yuuri lets him. 

 

Everything comes full-circle. 

 

* * *

Victor doesn't skate anymore. He coaches- for real, now, that is. He never marries.

* * *

Yuuri doesn't compete anymore. But he skates. He never could deny himself that. He feels the extra years weigh on him, even now.

But then again, they always did. 

* * *

 


End file.
